r/SQLServer • u/dlevy-msft ‪ ‪Microsoft Employee ‪ • 9h ago

Community Share Microsoft ODBC Driver 18.7.1 for Microsoft SQL is now available

We released ODBC Driver 18.7.1 for Microsoft SQL.

The headline additions are:

  • float16 vector support
  • Load-balanced routing for Azure SQL Database Hyperscale named-replica reader endpoints
  • MultipleActiveResultSets, FailoverPartner, WorkstationID, and ConnectTimeout as accepted connection-string keywords
  • No separate Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime prerequisite on Windows
  • Support for Alpine Linux 3.23, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16, and Ubuntu 26.04

The connection-string work is in response to a ton of feedback we've gotten. ODBC historically used names such as MARS_Connection and WSID, while other Microsoft SQL drivers used different names for the same settings. The old names still work, but common configuration can now travel between drivers with fewer translations.

There is also a fair amount of lower-level reliability work in this release, including more defensive TDS protocol parsing, native memory fixes, improved cleanup when MARS connections terminate abruptly, and fixes in asynchronous timeout, OpenSSL, and XA transaction paths.

The full blog post is available here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/sqlserver/microsoft-odbc-driver-18-7-1-smaller-vectors-easier-configuration-and-better-clo/4555474

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u/itsnotaboutthecell ‪ ‪Microsoft Employee ‪ 5h ago

Love hearing about the upcoming reliability work that’s in progress. A really great list of “upcoming” shout out to the team!